SocGen names new head of international retail

PARIS (Reuters) - Societe Generale said it was replacing the head of its international retail operations, which have seen mixed results in markets such as Russia and Greece.

Jean-Luc Parer, head of the global finance unit, was named to replace Jean-Louis Mattei, who had headed international retail banking at France's No. 2 bank since 1998, effective on Monday, the bank said in a statement.

Mattei, who joined SocGen in 1973, will retire in March 2013, until which time he will serve as adviser to senior management, the bank said in a statement.

The move comes at a time of upheaval in SocGen's international operations, where mounting losses at Greek unit Geniki and Russian bank Rosbank have overshadowed the French bank's relative lack of exposure to the euro zone's trouble spots.

SocGen is trying to keep up with peers in an industry-wide race to beef up capital and is in talks to sell its Egyptian and Greek units. Still, its international operations have been doing better than those of some peers, including domestic rival Credit Agricole , which is also seeking to sell its Greek unit.

Earnings at SocGen's international retail unit fell 1.4 percent in the second quarter, with results in at Rosbank flat and a decline in its Romanian unit, even as the Mediterranean basis and Africa showed strong growth.

The bank took a 250 million euro second-quarter writedown for Rosbank, which is undergoing a strategic overhaul.

In Greece, SocGen has said it was in "advanced" talks to sell Geniki to Piraeus Bank .

SocGen said earlier this year it was cutting jobs in Russia, Romania, Poland and Egypt, where Qatar National Bank is in talks to buy SocGen's National Societe Generale Bank unit.

The bank did not disclose the age of either Mattei, who was born in 1947, or Parer, who has been with the bank since 1980 and was appointed special adviser to the international business earlier this year.